


It's Everything That Makes This Place Home

by Honey_Butterscotch



Series: Enter the Dragon [3]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe, Atla verse braille, Azula is not entirely a feral child because she has friends to impress, DRUK, Did i read the comics, Did i watch korra, Don't like it don't read, Dragons, Dragons grow really fast and mature very slow, Firebending & Firebenders, Future MaiLeeZula, Gen, Good mom ursa, Happy Azula (Avatar), Human friends - Freeform, I love that tag, I will explain how that works later, Implied past yue & zuko friendship, Iroh (Avatar) is a Good Uncle, Iroh (Avatar) loves Tea, Iroh meets zuko again after like 5 years and hes like oh no, Its what she deserves in this au, Lightning spirit blessed Azula, Mai and Ty Lee are here, Making up stuff about dragons, Memory suppression due to trauma, Piandao is cool, Re-discovery of braille, Relevant for later, Sane Azula (Avatar), So were all gonna have to get cool with retconning real quick, Sorry but that's how I work, Spirits, Sun spirit blessed zuko, Swords, Thunder and Lightning, Worldbuilding, Yeah thats right she loves azula in this one, Zuko's rainbow fire, Zuko's slow descent into his feral state, no, not at all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-08
Updated: 2020-10-10
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:27:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 5,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26722135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Honey_Butterscotch/pseuds/Honey_Butterscotch
Summary: Just things that make the abandoned Southern Air Temple home.
Relationships: Azula & Iroh (Avatar), Azula & Mai & Ty Lee, Azula & Mai (Avatar), Azula & Ty Lee (Avatar), Azula & Ursa (Avatar), Azula & Zuko (Avatar), Druk & Zuko (Avatar), Iroh & Piandao (Avatar), Iroh & Ursa (Avatar), Iroh & Zuko (Avatar), Mai & Ty Lee (Avatar), Momo & Zuko (Avatar), Piandao & Zuko (Avatar), Ursa & Zuko (Avatar)
Series: Enter the Dragon [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1943896
Comments: 50
Kudos: 263





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Lmao pls comment I crave validation and support and friendship

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zuko slowly starts to forget things. Azula didn't have much to remember, but she remembers it all.

It was on his seventh birthday that the dragons took him into the sky. Zuko was seven years old when he found out what flying was like. And that is also the same time he started losing memories of what he would later call Before. The Before was whipped away by the winds threading through his hair and gold fire streaked with purple and green and red billowing from his mouth. It was singed by Azula's growing lightning, the blue-white energy turning all those memories of Before into kindling. By the time he was 13, he recalled almost nothing but some phantom pains and the ghosts of a cruel man's angry scream on bad days and a glittering pale pond with tiny turtleducks and strands of white hair of someone who he had called 'best friend' when it was good days. He never remembered who the person with moonlight colored hair was. He only knew that they were part of the good days (most days thankfully) and the memories of the time in the Before. He was in the Now, which was precarious balancing acts on high arches and colorful fire and the dragons. The Now was his sister, his mom, and him and the Nest. His Now was good and bright and happy.

Zuko had awarded all the older dragons with the titles of either Auntie or Uncle, and all the immature dragons were called cousin. Even the youngest dragon, Yuna, who had been the size of Zuko from snout to tail was large enough to easily coil around a pillar five times and Zuko would still scramble along the ridges of the dragons' backs without a care. Azula followed his example, and even his mom had taken to it. "Auntie, why don't I remember what it was like before we lived here?" Amaterasu blew pale grey smoke from her nose and Zuko huffed little green sparks at her. "Well, it was a only year ago that you came here. Still, Hatchling, the things you may have experienced or witnessed have been suppressed, or stuffed away, in your mind. Because your mind wants to heal, it shoves all the bad memories away and forgets they happened, and you get to heal in your own way. You are very young still, so this might be your mind just wanting you to forget anything bad and replace it with all the good." She puffed more smoke, the grey clouds curling into vague ribbons of dragon shapes. Zuko nodded, scratching at the top part of his scalp where he used to wear his hair in a way he hadn't in a year. He forgot that as well.

He never forgot Uncle Iroh. He never forgot Lu Ten. But he forgot the man who stood in the shadows with weird facial hair and a gleam in his eyes when he looked at Azula or Zuko that made the siblings' hair stand on end. He never forgot the scent of jasmine, lavender, ginseng and mint. The taste of sun berry jam or honeyberry tarts. He did forget the man he had called father, almost entirely save for the faded scars that Zuko had collected, the fingerprint burns on both wrists and forearms, the two palm shaped ones that wrapped around his ankles, and the expansive, pink-peach burn mark that covered his shoulder. Those and the occasional haunting of his dreams were the only things that clung still. He also forgot a man who hid behind a dias of flames, who was said to be Zuko and Azula's grandfather. He never even knew him, and the man had disappeared from Zuko's memories by the time he was nine. He disappeared behind days of bright blue skies and moon peach scented breezes and warm grey stone under Zuko's feet. He forgot things he had been taught in wherever he lived before, everything replaced by Amaterasu's teachings and Daiki's scrolls and Uzume's stories. And, perhaps, it was better that way.

* * *

Azula didn't have many memories of what her brother called Before. She _supposes_ that's because she only had two years worth of memories from Caldera, but at least she still remembered what the place was called. And two years worth of memories are more than enough for her. She remembers a man who liked to lurk in corners, chatting to Father and giving these strange looks that made Azula feel the need to simply _burn_ him. The man looked at Father like he was Agni in the body of a human, and looked at her, mother, and Zuko the way a pygmy puma looks at rat moles. She hated that man. Maybe if she were to go flying like Zuko had been allowed to, she would begin to forget as well.

(She never forgot. She just ignored the memories and eventually they stopped haunting the corners of her mind.)


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Azula, on her first flight, sees smoke curling up from the forest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry if the chapter lengths are inconsistent but some chapters are easier to write than others and I can generate more for certain chapters than others.

"Zuzu, you're entire body is shaking."

"Oh."

"Why are you acting like it's your first flight when it's _mine_?"

"You'll see."

Azula rolled her eyes at her brother and ignored the itching urge in her fingers to hunt down a comb and maybe a knife and fix her brother's tangled hair. It wasn't _matted,_ Mom would never allow that to happen, but frankly he looked like he had been caught in a windstorm. The sky was cloudy, strange for a summer day. She watched her brother leap into place on Amaterasu's back with a grace she knew he possessed only when he was doing things that could end in breaking his neck if he were to slip up. Raijin, one of Amaterasu's few brothers that she came from the same clutch of eggs as her, carried her. She clutched at a spine ridge, and she felt the excitement pool in her stomach. She had never been afraid, not when she could get close to the sky and clouds and if she were lucky, someday she would fly through a storm. Mom waved at her and Zuko, never one for the heights and the wind. The second the dragons had the wind under their wings was the second that Azula finally understood why the Air Nomads from Uzume's stories were always so free. She couldn't help it when she started laughing, laughing so hard that her eyes stung with tears that were dried quick in the wind. Zuko was climbing on to Amaterasu's head, one arm wrapped around one of her horns and he started leaning precariously away, his torso jutting out into the wind while his bare feet and arm held him. What an idiot. She almost wanted to try it, but her brother had two more years of dragon riding experience and she had only started to take interest in running about on the rooftops like him. She let the wind catch her hair and cut to her skin. "Lala, there's smoke!" Smoke curled out of a forest, not spread out enough to be a forest fire. It looked like it came up in a column. like from a campfire. "Zuzu, can we go check?" He nodded and his dumdum self just dropped into the trees once they were low enough to the ground. She let Raijin take her to the ground and there was a little house made of wood. Smoke was funneling out of the chimney and there were two girls sitting in front of the house. One was folding herself up weirdly, her belly arched up to the sky and her fingertips touching the heels of her feet. The other had the most bored expression Azula could have imagined on a girl her age, and someone had let her have a little knife. "Mai, Ty Lee, do you want some tea?" Airi was there, long brown braid swinging over her shoulder. There was a gold ring on her finger where there hadn't been before. That meant Airi was _married._ "No thanks, Airi!" The bendy girl, who looked a lot like Airi, chirped. "Ok, Ty Lee. Why don't you two go explore the woods a bit? Stay close, ok?" Airi disappeared back inside.

"LaLa, it's other humans!"

"Maybe they could be our friends."

"Are you sure?"

"Definitely. Come on, Zuzu."

Azula peaked her head out from the tree, in the full view of the girls. Zuko stayed up in his tree, hands tapping the wood nervously. "Who are you?" The girl with black hair (she was pretty, Azula noted) had a natural glare in her eyes, but she also looked curious. "Azula." The girl with brown hair (she was also pretty) gave her a wide smile and her eyes were grey. Grey like the Air Nomads. "I'm Ty Lee, and that's Mai! She's my best friend, do you want to be my best friend too?" Azula remembered Zuko's best friend, who she had met twice at most when the girl's father came to try and negotiate with grandfather so his people would stay safe. "Can I really?" It was Mai who took her hand and brought her to them. "My brother is in a tree. His name is Zuko." She looked for Zuko, barely spotting him melting from one shadow to the next, going higher in the tree he had been in. "Oh. I don't think he wants to meet you yet. He's shy right now." They all shrugged and played until the sun started to set, Ty Lee teaching her cartwheels and telling her why she and Mai were here. Airi (her oldest sister) had married a girl named Hana (the same Hana as Azula's other favourite person from Caldera!) and their parents had disapproved. Ty Lee had stood up for Airi, and their parents hit her. Airi had taken Hana and Ty Lee, and left. Well, tried to leave because Ty Lee refused to leave behind Mai, whose parents were bad for her, and Airi and Hana helped Mai escape. They hid on a ship and stole a rowboat after three days, managing to make it to where they are three months ago. Zuko had come down a little, curious, and then promptly returned to his high point when Ty Lee had sprung up and tried to coax him over. Azula didn't particularly mind. She could have Mai and Ty Lee to herself for the most part then. 

"Mom, I made friends!"

"Really?" 

"Yes. Airi and Hana from Before got married, and Airi has a sister my age. Her name is Ty Lee, and she has a friend named Mai who's also my age and they said we're best friends, all three of us." 

Her mom had that smile she wore when she was smiling only at her thoughts. Azula shrugged and continued on. 

"Zuzu stuck himself in a tree the whole time!"

"Why would I want to be down there?"

"To make friends!"

"I have friends!"

"People friends, Zuzu!"

"The dragons are great though."

"Yes they are, but I want people friends too."

Zuko sighed and shrugged like she was saying something he didnt understand. Her brother was a weirdo.

(Years later, she would make her way to Ty Lee and Mai's little house, clutching a golden egg that had tiny cracks running along its shell. She would ask them to run away with her deep into the mountains to raise a baby dragon with her. Ty Lee would take her hand and Mai would kiss her cheek and drag little bags from under their beds. They'd be gone before sunrise, leaving notes behind and nothing else.)


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They find things that have been lost for a while.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want ATLA verse braille and I'm gonna get it.

Scroll scavenging was one of the few not dangerous things Zuko liked to do. He would get lost for hours in the Air Nomads' libraries, sequestering himself with some well-cared for bit of paper, carefully lighting a palm when it got too dark to see anything. More often than not, he could be found hunched over a theater scroll. His mom had nearly cried when he presented her with an original transcription of Love Amongst the Dragons (kept by Daiki simply because the name had amused him endlesssly). The Air Nomads had kept ginormous, endless libraries but the dragons that had been inhabiting the abandoned temple for nearly one hundred years had brought their own scrolls that contained knowledge that the dragons had accumulated over their lifetimes. Their very _long_ lifetimes. Their was scrolls in cracks and holes and empty spaces (dragons, for all their worldly intelligence, didn't completely care for organization and as long as there was some semblance of a system, carefully shoved their collections away anywhere they pleased), records placed in safe crevices and hidden rooms. Sometimes, they were lost, ripped or otherwise ruined beyond repair. But those times were very few and far between. Azula would join him, sometimes finding things for herself, sometimes finding things for Mai and Ty Lee. Or maybe those were for her as well, but Zuko wasn't going to bother himself with the complexities of human relationships beyond Azula and his mom. Not yet. Azula was wedged in the space between the fifth shelf and the books while Zuko clung to the seventh shelf with his legs while his arms rummaged around, looking for something. He wasn't sure what it was he was looking for until his fingers brushed against a paper. The paper felt different, still that crackling leaf feeling but lines upon lines were raised up and they seemed to form sentences. He stuck that one in a sleeve and searched for more. There were three more in that shelf that felt like the one resting in his sleeve and he collected them all before climbing to somewhere he could read. Azula seemed to have found something for herself and didn't pay him mind, absorbed in the yellow, crackling paper. He unfurled his scrolls and began his descent into their world.

The first one he found seemed to be a list of characters and what they meant and what they felt like individually, the ink infused inside the paper making bumps that someone could read if they traced their fingers over it correctly. The second one were strings of simple sentences, a guide on how to write with these characters and how to read them. The other two were much the same, except the last one gave a name to this writing: braille. Braille, meant for people who were blind or otherwise couldn't see, or anybody who wished to learn it. Braille was lost 100 years ago, almost permanently. Zuko kept these scrolls in his bed, along with six others he found later. There weren't many, but the ones he did find were incredibly long and they aided him well in learning this lost writing. Azula learned beside him, interested in what she could do now with this knowledge in her pocket. Zuko kept these scrolls in a satchel, toting it along with him. He kept them safe, and later found a scroll hidden deep in the shelves that described the process of creating braille. He kept that one too. 

(Years later, he would meet a girl with blank grey-washed jade eyes and a fierce grin that seemed to have too many teeth for somebody to not fear her smile. He would meet a girl who reminded him of Azula, who couldn't read or write at the volition of her parents. He would pull her aside and press her fingers against the papers and teach her what they meant. She would deny the pounding of her heart and the excitement in her blood and she would learn to read. But this was far in the future.)


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Five years after they disappeared, Iroh finds them again on his soul searching journey.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anybody is stressed out,,,same. Just remeber to try and take it as slow as you can and keep things easy for yourself. That might be a challenge but please just let yourself have a break from work or school for at least ten minutes.

The minute he ended the siege on Ba Sing Se and Iroh ordered the troops to pull back and return home, he wept alone. He had lost his sister in law, and his dearest neice and precious nephew five years ago, which had put little cracks in a part of his heart. The siege wore him down and made him weary, left him feeling like a much older man than he already was. The loss of his only child, his last family (he was sure his nephew, niece, and sister in law disappeared because of his brother and father. That erased those two from his heart) was gone forever. Crushed on a battlefield he had brought about. Iroh did not return with the troops. He took some things, some necessities, and left. He told no one.

Travelling through the earth kingdom was an experience he wished he had undergone sooner. There were places, inhabited by soldiers who did unjust things, soldiers both Fire Nation and Earth Kimgdom alike. One of the more enjoyable, stranger experiences was when he passed near Gaoling, cutting through the surrounding forest and hills. There was a small dirty child, a girl with ragged clothes, no shoes, and loose hair. Her eyes didn't see, he could tell that much, but perhaps she could in her own way judging by how she gazed at him as he passed. He watched her bend from a distance, something powerful and unrelenting in her form that made Iroh think she would be a true master one day. She was around 5, and Iroh's heart flumped when he thought about how he never got to see a 5 year old Azula. "Hello, young miss! Nice day to be in the forest!" He smiled and kept walking. The girl was gone the second he blinked and he thought maybe he had just greeted a wayward spirit of the Earth, born from stone and soil. He walked on.

The water tribes were something he happened upon unintentionally. He had met a kind, very old, very wise man named Gyasto at the edges of the Earth Kingdom. The man had eyes like an ancient being and a laugh like a young child, along with a great appreciation for fruit pie and tea. Gyatso offered to show him the Water Tribes, and somehow procured a boat suitable for sailing in the icy waters. The benders he saw and met were fluid and graceful in a way that made him feel something in his heart loosen. They were at peace, instead of fighting to burn with anger and hatred like his father and brother. Iroh hadn't bended in many months, and he didn't feel like it was quite the right time. 

Gyatso was an airbender, he later discovered and he felt something bubble in his stomach. Perhaps Gyatso was not the last, maybe there were others out there who had escaped his grandfather's plot to eradicate them. When he asked, Gyatso smiled the smile of something arcahically old and mischievous and offered to show him what the winds could do in tandem with an airbender. 

The dragons were even more unexpected, and Masters Ran and Shaw gave him strange looks with their eyes and murmured about the Southern Air temple after they had surrounded him with their colorful fire. The fire left his skin warmed and his fire rekindled with something he had maybe always understood. The hate and anger left him weak and burned from himself. This fire, this flame of passion and living, left him whole again. His fire pulsed red-orange like a heartbeat, more gold than it used to be and less vibrant red. It looked warm. 

Gyatso disappeared again, maybe returning to the water benders but maybe to somewhere else. So Iroh journeyed alone to the temples, starting with the Eastern temple, then the Western one, going to the Northern one where he met some very fun people and a young boy in a rolling chair with a bright smile and something decidedly air bender-esque in his laugh. The Southern Air Temple was the last one, the ones he heard the Masters whisper over. He didn't entirely remember how he managed to get to the top, but he did. He almost keeled over at the sight of his long-gone nephew sleeping peacefully in the courtyard. Was this a trick by the spirits, a final test on his spirit journey? His nephew's eyes blinked open and stared at him, squinting in the pale, warm light. Then Iroh felt thin arms wrap around his neck and a small chin tuck over his shoulder and his nephew was hugging him, tackling him with all his lithe weight. "Azula, Mom, come here! It's Uncle Iroh!"

Zuko was eleven, thin, and bright eyed and looked so unlike Ozai. Azula was nine, built just the same and had a raw energy in her eyes, and looked only like her father around her chin. Ursa looked happier than she ever had appeared at the palace, smile more full and eyes softer. Her children looked like her the most, a blessing indeed. He brought marsh mint leaves from a pocket and Ursa put the scratched kettle they had on the fire. Azula gave him a reserved, affectionate piece on the cheek and a squeezing, quick hug before sitting beside him. Zuko had decided mimicking a limpet was the best course of action and was dutifully following through. He had always loved his uncle, one of the few people his memories had refused to forget. "Nephew, you're almost taller than me. I would say bigger but I doubt you will ever be as round as me." Azula leaned against his stomach. "A fabulous pillow. Very comfortable, Uncle." She shook as he laughed, her grin small and content. "Thank you, niece! I fear you will outgrow me just as quick as your brother!" The breeze carried the smell of marsh mint tea and the sound of golden laughter.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Iroh thinks maybe his nephew should spend some time with other humans, and maybe pick up a sword while he's at it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uhuhuhuhhuhhhh yeah no I just wanted to write uncle piandao

His nephew is twelve and wild as the mountain vines that snake up the walls and through cracks in the ceilings. Azula is somewhat less wild, still flinging herself from a ceiling to a wall at any given moment and attempts to wrestle the (astondingly large) toddler dragons, but she has her feet on the ground more and has some social skills (he suspects she practices eloquence solely for the two little girls her age that love in the cabin nearby). Zuko, however, was not in the same mindset and was off the ground more than he was ever on it, creeping silently along in the shadows as if he too were a prowling dragon. He worried, however, that maybe there would come a day he would need to protect himself and his fire alone wouldn't protect him. "Ursa, my dear sister, what if I took Zuko from the temple for a while, and brought him someone who could teach him to protect himself without fire? It could also be q chance to get him closer to humans."

"I would hate to separate him from the dragons and myself for so long, but I have to agree. Someday he'll go far away from here and I know that he may not always be able to use his fire."

"Do you think Azula would also want to learn?"

"Definitely."

"Why wouldn't I want to learn?"

Azula stood in the door way, arms crossed. Her hair draped over her shoulders in a half up top knot and her eyebrows raised under bangs. "I don't want to go away from Ty Lee and Mai but if I learn, I can show them once I am good enough." The girl muttered something about showing off as well, but Iroh let that be. "How long will we be gone?"

"That really depends on yourself and Piandao."

"Who's Piano?"

Zuko came in from the hallway, one of the newborn dragons curled in his hair and two more poking out from his shirt. "Piandao, nephew, is a sword master and a good old friend of mine. Would you like to learn how to use a sword?"

"Did he teach Lu Ten?"

"Yes."

"I'll go."

* * *

Piandao had many young men and women turn up at his doorstep, either bragging about their skills or mumbling over their uncertainty with a hopeful, earnest light in the corner of their eyes. He always chose the latter as his students, with very few exceptions for the former. These two were quite different for a good few reasons. For one, they simply stared at him with quizzical eyes as they held their uncle's hand. And then there was the matter of them being Iroh's niece and nephew, who have been supposedly dead for 6 years. "Hello, sir. A true pleasure to meet such a renowned sword master." Princess(?) Azula bleed delicately, as if she hadn't been taken away from court at age four. "Hello?" Prince(?) Zuko gave him a quick wave, eyes trailing a butterbee behind Piandao's window. He hid a smile behind his hand as the girl flicked her brother between the eyes and brought his attention back. This served to make him quite a bit more awkward, shifting himself around in his chair. "Do you think you two are qualified to swordfight?"

"No." Zuko looked at the floor and Azula's eyebrows were making avaliant attempt under her hair to crawl into her hairline with how high she was raising them. 

"Would you explain?"

"Well, we're not qualified at all. We're, um, well, we have never learned how to use a sword. We can't swordfight."

"Hm, very well. I suppose I shall have to teach you to do that then."

Their eyes lit up like fireflies and Piandao thinks of that everytime one of them almost send him into immediate heart failure. 

The (former?) princess has a natural charisma to her that already makes Piandao believe that she mass potential to be a very dangerous girl. She walks with a vindication he doesn't see in many 10 year olds, and had she been raised in the palace, he would have dismissed it as something born from the cruel environment. But, maybe this was also a product of where she grew up, this domineering stance that maybe she had used to tame unruly dragons. She could have very well been an elite soldier if she remained with her father. Her brother (he could barely bring himself to call the boy a prince when he spent five minutes watching Zuko fight with one of the local, somewhat feral pygmy pumas that roamed his grounds) was someone he couldn't truly label as dangerous upon first meeting him, or even talking with him the first few times. The thing was, Zuko was incredibly unpredictable. He could be standing in the rock garden, eyes intently fixed on nothing in particular one moment, and then kicking dust off his roof the next. One moment he would be sitting in a corner for no good reason, the next Fat would be clutching at his hand that now had small bite mark, dropping the scissors he had been trying to use on the boy's hair. This was a great source of entertainment, but Piandao kept that thought to himself.

* * *

Zuko liked the way the swords gleamed, like dragons scales when they caught the light. Azula had quickly figured out that the metal conducted her lightning very well, and he never picked up any blade she had handled previously. It had been near seven months since he last saw his mother and the dragons, but Uncle often dropped by with some new random tea. He'd never admit it but the jasmine one was nice and reminded him of something he couldn't remember (the flower field behind the Fire Nation palace, he would find out years later, that his mother would sneak them out to with Lu Ten.) "Master Piandao?"

"Yes, Zuko?"

"What kind of sword did Lu Ten use?"

The man set down his calligraphy brush (Zuko also liked calligraphy. Art, not so much, that's what Azula enjoyed the most really) and pressed his hand against a paper on a wall. It was a portrait, one of Lu Ten with his now dead cousin's writing scrawled in the corner. "A single dao sword. He was left handed, and never got used to writing with his right hand. Dao would fit you well, but maybe not a single one." Zuko nodded, looking at his own portrait pinned to a wall. "Am I as good as he was, Master?"

"I think he would say you were better."

It was 7 months later he returned to the southern air temple, hair and eyes just as wild, and a set of dual dao strapped to his back. Azula grinned at her cutlass as she cleaned its blade, and Zuko smiled softly at the name he had carved into the left handle. Lu Ten's name pressed against his palm every time he held the dao.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dragon eggs and lemurs

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm trying to come up with names for azulas dragon in advance since druk is already druk. And yeah that's right momo shows up here my favourite lemur

There was a troop of lemurs chattering, gathered up on a bare tree and flinging small bits of moon peaches and mantis beetles at each other. Zuko couldn't keep his eyes off them, and his fingers twitched like he wanted to pick one up and pet it. There was a particularly strange lemur, one that had the same wide green eyes and white and brown fur as the others, but it strayed from its family often. It always kept a moon peach chunk lodged in a tiny hand, like it was carrying around a snack for whenever. Zuko would be sad when the lemurs left and took this funny little one with them. They were gone by winter, but one remained. The small, funny one who offered them a whole peach and when Zuko took it, the lemur scampered inside and immediately overtook the warmest blanket it could find. "You like peaches, right? I'll call you Momo." Momo gave a high pitched chirp and burrowed deeper into the blanket. 

Momo was good at finding random objects and liked shoving them into one particularly deep hole in a wall in the library. Nobody was completely sure where he got them since they weren't from the hoard, but they let him be once Azula found a small dagger peeking out from the hole. Anything he could carry ended up in Momo's hidey-hole. The only thing he didn't touch were the dragon eggs, which were buried in soft rags of old clothes the siblings had outgrown and worn away, the cloth folds studded with the occasional glinting treasure. The shells themselves glimmered bright gold, like droplets of sunlight. When Zuko asked why, Amaterasu gave him one her smiles. "They are children of Agni, just as you are, and are born from something gold as the sun above."

"I wasn't born from a golden egg."

"No, I suppose that's why it got caught in your eyes."

"What did?"

"The sunlight."

* * *

The Masters Ran and Shaw did not often visit, not when they had their own island that they were born on and would rather remain there, where they had built a hoard and nest deep in the mountains there. When they did, they often turned up in the early morning, traveling in the night so their vibrant hides wouldn't be seen through the clouds. No matter how dense the clouds were, they were such vibrant shades of blue and red that they'd be seen from far, far below. They turned up in the summer a few days before Azula turned thirteen, just a few days before the summer solstice. Two eggs were clutched in their jaws and they gently passed the glinting gold to Zuko and Azula, and vanished, flying as quick as they could to hopefully beat the full sunrise. Zuko clutched the egg, eyes wide with a wonder he couldn't explainand the feeling of a life pulsing under his palms and in his arms. He heated his hands and lightly blew pale green fire on the shell. Azula ran off, palms warm and searching for blankets to use as a nest like the other dragons. Ursa gave up a dress she no longer wore, and watched her children gaze at the eggs like she had at them. The eggs remained in their egg state for a while. Zuko had decided on the name Druk, no matter what the dragon turned out to be but Azula refused to name her egg just yet. "They can wait." She would claim, eyes cast to the direction in which Mai and Ty Lee lived. "I'll tell you the name when the egg hatches."

She was somehow a very good liar. Or, well, good at omitting the truth. She disappeared in the night the next fall, a month after she turned fourteen. Druk had been hatched for 8 months by then, already the size of a grown hunting dog fox. Cracks had lined the top of the shell and then the next morning, the egg and keeper were gone along with Mai and Ty Lee, apparently deep in the mountains. Zuko would shrug, kiss his mom on the head, and continue on with Momo and Druk,who had quickly become friends. After all, who was he to try and catch lightning?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I refuse to have cockroaches cross with any other animal because those creepy ass bitches are scary enough on their own I'm not having them become half wasp or smthn


End file.
